In for a Penny

Finished November 26

In for a Penny by Kelsey Browning and Nancy Naigle

This cosy mystery has elements of humour and craziness. Set in small town Georgia, it begins with Lillian Summer Fairview dealing with the situation she discovers after her husband's death. The entirety of what she is dealing with only comes to the reader gradually. Lillian wanted to give her husband a proper funeral, and to get the money to do that she committed a crime. She is now readying herself for a trip to jail.

Part of her plan was to get her friend Maggie, also a widow, to move into her large house, a listed property that has been handed down in her family for generations. She also leaves instructions for Maggie to retrieve her car from the prison parking lot. Maggie doesn't discover the full situation until after Lillian is gone, and she tries to protect her friend's privacy and reputation.

The local police chief is a good man, but Lillian has kept him unaware of her situation as well. He drops into the house often and finds himself assisting the women with maintenance as it arises. When he is asked to move along an RV trying to camp in the local Walmart parking lot, something compels him to move them the Lillian's property. There, the RV owner Sera finds herself befriending Lillian and Maggie. When the chief is asked to intervene in another senior lady's travels, she ends up at Lillian's as well. 

There the three women look at Lillian's situation without her and determine that there is someone else involved who shouldn't be getting away scot-free, and they begin an investigation that has them determined to get their man.

I liked the characters, who started out looking like caricatures, but became more nuanced as the story unfolded. There is humour, intelligence, and southern charm here, and they all bring something to the situation.